Teaching STRUCTURE

Bachelor and master programmes in architecture

Based on the vision Engaging through Architecture Aarhus School of Architecture aims at training the best architects in an international study environment rooted in a Scandinavian architectural tradition – which is why we want to engage in dialogue with the world around us, ask questions, and provide physical solutions to society’s major challenges.

Aarhus School of Architecture offers a project-based education at an internationally high academic and professional level. We ensure this through direct contact with and continuous knowledge exchange across the teaching and research environments with an emphasis on the practice-oriented aspects of our programmes.

We emphasise the traditional core competencies within architecture, focusing on design as a process and on the ability to work both spatially and visually based on a creative and holistic approach.

The school’s teaching and research are closely linked by a structure comprising teaching programmes and research labs that makes for a strong academic environment. This structure supports knowledge sharing between the school’s teachers and researchers in academic environments and helps ensure an ongoing dialogue about the development of teaching that is based on the most recent knowledge.

Read about the bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes:

Bachelor’s Degree Programme

The Bachelor’s degree programme is an academic, artistic three -year undergraduate programme that leads to a bachelor’s degree (BA) in architecture. The programme provides a foundation for further studies on Master’s degree programmes – nationally as well as internationally. The Bachelor’s degree programme can also provide the basis for professional employment.

The aim of the programme is to train bachelors who have basic skills and insights into architecture with the art of building as focal point, but who are also skilled in transforming given conditions and requirements – aesthetic, functional, technical and economic – into architectural form.

During the first academic year of the Bachelor’s Degree Programme (the first and second semesters), our students are given a general introduction to the subject area of architecture and its methods and tools. From the third semester, an increasing degree of complexity is introduced into teaching, and the students develop further the skills they acquired in the course of the first academic year. During the fifth semester, students write their Bachelors project. The sixth, and final, semester of the Bachelor’s Degree Programme is dedicated to internships or exchange programmes.

On the Bachelor’s Degree Programme, the first academic year is primarily taught in Danish. During the second and third academic years, teaching is in both Danish and English. The programme is open to all applicants who meet the Danish language skills requirements.

Master’s Degree Programme

The Master’s Degree Programme in architecture is a two-year specialisation which builds on the Bachelor’s Degree Programme in architecture. The education is structured around the artistic and scientific theories, methods and practices of the architectural profession. Students who complete the entire programme are entitled to use the title Master of Arts in Architecture, cand.arch.

The education aims at educating graduates who, as architects, master both scientific analysis and artistic experiments and are able to translate complex architectural issues into solutions and statements that relate meaningfully to the conditions of the past and today. The education qualifies graduates for employment as architects in Denmark as well as internationally.

The students are organised in several units of study (called studios), which allow them to specialise in e.g. architecture, restoration, planning or landscape architecture. At the commencement of the Master’s Degree Programme, students choose a teaching programme and a unit of study which they follow during the two academic years the programme spans.

Theory-based teaching and supervision by external mentors in subjects related to practice are compulsory elements of the Master’s Degree Programme.